Visiting Hours
by PenNameSmith
Summary: Manga, post chapter 94. Heinkel wasn't expecting any visitors in the hospital.
1. Awakening

Her first thought upon awakening was that hell was significantly softer than she had been expecting.

Following which, it occurred to her to wonder why hell would contain flowers, linoleum floors, lumpy pillows, and a machine that went _ping_. Or, for that matter, what sort of hellish torture could possibly be devised from a bunch of tubes sticking out of her arm.

At which point, Heinkel Wolfe sighed, sat up, and reluctantly considered the likely possibility that she was not in hell, but was, in fact, lying in a hospital bed missing an arm and a leg and half of her face. After a brief moment of reflection, she decided that she probably would have preferred the alternative, all things being equal. At least in hell you knew what was what. Hospitals, on the other hand, managed to be an awfully unpleasant contradiction of sorts, brimming over with thoroughly unpleasant ways to 'help' you.

That was how she saw it, anyway. She'd never actually been to the hospital much, at least not since her rookie years. She was good at that sort of thing. Of course, a burning wasteland full of monsters and a razor wire nutcase never really helped your odds much, no matter how good you were.

She grit her teeth, or at least what was left of them. Could that have been a drop of wry humor? From her? God, she really must have snapped.

. . . No, she thought, after another moment's reflection. No, that was probably just the morphine. Beside her, the machine that went _ping_ went _ping_, again.

She sat up farther, and tried to assess the situation. She was wearing a hospital gown, which made her feel utterly ridiculous and more than a little vulnerable, though as clothing it was fairly negligible compared to the miles of bandages that seemed to be covering most of her body. Her stumps, especially, felt as though they'd been swathed in layers of gauze three inches thick, at least. It hurt just to move, but she'd never let something like that stop her before. She probed the inside of her cheeks with her tongue, and felt stitches holding the jagged flesh together. She stretched her mouth experimentally, and winced at the sudden spike of pain.

The room itself was a stereotypical hospital-white. Air conditioner on too high. A vase of flowers, several days old, sitting on the bedside table, which was flanked, to her mild confusion, with what appeared to be several Get Well Soon cards. She was about to try and pick one up to examine it, when she heard a noise and her head snapped up in startled shock.

Heinkel glared across the room. Somehow – it was the drugs, had to be – she'd completely failed to notice the room's other occupant. Sloppy, she thought, suddenly panicked. Stupid. _Especially_ considering just who it was in the room with her, slouching in a plastic chair against the opposite wall. A girl – a woman – skinny, blonde, with messy, angular hair that swept out in chaotic shocks away from the back of her neck. She was wearing headphones, and her eyes were closed, head bowed. She didn't seem to have noticed that Heinkel was even awake.

Seras Victoria. The Draculina.

Heinkel's eyes narrowed. It didn't matter how awful and vivid the war had been . . . for some reason nothing was ever going to stand out in her mind quite like the sight of a mad, bloodstained girl rocketing down from the blackened skies to hand her and the other agents their collective arses on a platter. That sort of thing just kind of stuck with you. Her hand went to her hip instinctively, but of course there was nothing there. Heinkel grunted. Not having her guns made her feel even more naked and vulnerable than the stupid hospital gown did.

She shrank against the wall, unsure of what to do, consumed, just for a second, with a burning and inexplicable desire to hide beneath the covers. What could she do, after all, in this situation? She was injured and unarmed, and trapped in a room with Hellsing's pet vampire, a ruthless monster, an abomination before God who was . . .

. . . Wearing a pink turtleneck. With a Hello Kitty brooch. And was . . . _humming_?

"_Hmmm hmm-hm-hmmmm _. . . "

Heinkel hesitated for a moment, and then opened her mouth. It hurt just to move her lips and her spit tasted like blood and her words were barely above a rasp, but she forced herself to speak anyway.

"What are you doing here?"

The vampire didn't look up. "_Hmm hm-hmm, shiiii-hine down on meee . . . _"

Heinkel shouted. It made her throat burn. "I _said_, what are you _doing_ here?"

Seras started, and looked up, seeming to notice Heinkel for the first time. She snatched the headphones off and looked apologetically across at the other woman. "Sorry! Sorry!" she exclaimed, flustered. "I'm sorry, I didn't notice you were awake." She pointed to the headphones in explanation. "I was listening to Mr. Big, see."

Heinkel glared at the vampire with fresh suspicion. "_Mr. Big_? What's that? Some kind of . . . of code name for Sir Integral?

There was a long, stale pause.

Seras gave Heinkel a blank look. "Um. No." She tilted her head. "It's what's on my Walkman. Look, I don't think you should be sitting up like that, you're hurt bad and you were out for a _really_ long time."

"How long?"

"Almost two months. Seven . . . no." Seras counted off on her fingers. "Eight weeks, today. Nobody thought you were gonna make it, but I guess they were wrong, huh?" She gave a friendly, encouraging grin. It was unnervingly pointy.

Heinkel's expression remained sour. "I don't see why I should trust anything you've got to say. You've obviously been sent to spy on me. Or worse."

The vampire snorted. "If I'd been sent here to kill you, I certainly wouldn't have waited this long to do it. And besides," she said, her voice suddenly hard, "I don't kill humans. _Ever_. No matter what _anyone_ tells me to do." She glared at Heinkel seriously, but the Catholic simply returned her look with an incredulous sneer. She didn't have even a single reason to trust the girl. For all she knew, the hospital room was fake, they were really in some ridiculously deep sub-level of the Hellsing manor, and the vampire had just been sent to play mind-games with her.

For all she knew.

Heinkel sat up further. "Alright. So maybe you're not going to kill me. How do I know you're not supposed to be spying on me?"

Seras looked guilty, suddenly. "Ah, well, there's the thing, actually. I kind of am."

A-_ha_.

"I _thought_ so. I knew I couldn't trust you, you damn monster." Heinkel tried to cross her arms indignantly, but found the action to be somewhat awkward considering that all she had left to cross was _arm_, singular. Seras, who had weathered the insult placidly, watched Heinkel's unbalanced defiance with a sympathetic expression.

"Oh, hey," she said, looking at Heinkel's bandaged stump. "I've _absolutely _been there." To demonstrate her point, she plucked the glove off of her left hand and rolled up the sleeve of her turtleneck. Underneath, her skin was completely black – it wasn't even real skin, Heinkel realized, but just more of that undulating, corporeal shadow, molded into a dummy arm. Seras waggled her fingers. They left little wispy contrails in the air behind them.

"It won't grow back for real, no matter how much blood I drink," Seras said. "I don't think I'll ever be able to get my actual hand back. And it was a _bitch_ figuring out how to make my wing stay like this all the time, let me tell you."

"It's better than nothing," Heinkel growled.

"Ah, well." Seras shrugged, and rolled her sleeve back down. "You'll manage, I think. One way or another." She offered another smile, more cryptic this time. It was still sympathetic, but in a way that was just a little bit different than before. Heinkel narrowed her eyes. Was that _pity_?

She tried to force the conversation back to its original route. "You're avoiding the point, vampire. You've been _spying_ on me."

Seras fidgeted, uncomfortably. "Well, now, lets not start jumping to conclusions. I was _sent_ to spy on you, yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean I've been following my instructions _precisely_ to the letter, you know?" She raised her eyebrows, nervously, with an expectant look. Heinkel didn't quite follow. She got the distinct feeling, though, that she had been meant to understand something she wasn't quite grasping. The girl sitting in front of her, Heinkel realized, could mow down entire regiments of monsters without thinking about it, and yet was spectacularly poor at explaining her own thoughts.

It was a funny sort of problem, Heinkel thought. It was . . . well, it was _human_.

She shook her head, trying to push the nagging thought away.

"What do you mean?"

"Well . . . " Seras shifted in her seat, staring off into space as she tried to explain. "My orders were to keep an eye on you. Hellsing thinks the Vatican has plans to make you the new trump card, something like that, so they wanted to know what I could find out about that."

Heinkel leaned back. "But you haven't found anything out yet."

"What are you talking about? Of course I have." Seras looked indignant. "Iscariot wants to make you their new regenerator. I heard them talking about it out in the hall a week ago." She glanced down at her fingernails, looking bored. "I mean, who wasn't expecting _that_? I don't see why they even bothered to send me at all. Common sense would have made a cheaper spy."

Heinkel froze, shocked and just the slightest bit terrified by the news that Seras had delivered so nonchalantly. A moment ago, she'd been bemoaning the loss of her limbs, but now that she was practically guaranteed to be regaining them she wasn't sure what to think. Was that the sort of existence she was willing to resign herself to? It wasn't as though she had much choice in the matter, though, if the order had come from on high.

"If that's the only reason you came, then why are you still here?"

"Ah. Well." Seras looked down and ran a hand through her hair, looking increasingly nervous. "Look, I . . . see, what it is, when I showed up, and that was a few weeks ago, you were completely out. You looked like a wreck, even worse than now. It . . . I mean, you were all alone, and all wrecked up, and, well . . . "

Heinkel frowned. "And _what_?"

"And nobody had even come to visit you!" Seras blurted out. She was leaning forward now, pensively, shoulders hunched. She turned her eyes back towards Heinkel. "I mean, I _know_ it probably sounds stupid when I say it, but it just seemed _wrong_ to me. And they weren't giving me any new orders, so I figured until they did I'd sort of, I don't know. Keep you company?"

There was a long, silent pause. Seras glanced down again, looking sheepish. ". . . Bloody hell," she said, quietly, after a while. "That _does_ soundstupid when I say it out loud."

Heinkel leaned back, slowly, entirely unsure of what to say. The frown had vanished, completely, and now she simply stared at the other woman, utterly confused as to what her reaction was supposed to be.

"You've . . . you've just been sitting here, for weeks?"

Seras looked back up. "Of course I haven't just been sitting here. That would've been silly. I talked a lot. And then I ran out of things to say for a while, so I went and found this." She reached into her bag, and emerged with a mildly singed novel, which she held up proudly. "I found it back at the British Library. What's _left_ of the British Library, anyway. This is the first one I could find that still had all of its pages."

Heinkel leaned forward, peering at the worn book. _The Fox and the Hound_, by Daniel P. Mannix. Her brow furrowed in further confusion. "You've been _reading_ to me?"

"Well, sure." Seras' expression was one of complete innocence. "What's wrong with that?"

"Look it's just that . . . " Heinkel hesitated, not entirely sure of how to explain things, or even what it was she was trying to explain in the first place. Before she could think of something to say, though, Seras' head snapped up, and she started out of her chair in surprise. Heinkel followed her gaze.

Three men in cassocks and dark glasses stood at the door, imposingly. _Backup_, Heinkel thought. With bloody perfect timing as well. Her frown returned, deeper this time.

It only took a second for each of the newly arrived Iscariots to produce a weapon and level it at Seras. She looked at them, uncertain, then swore quietly to herself and leveled a halfhearted accusing finger at Heinkel.

"Um, and that's, that's just a warning! You, um." Seras hesitated. " . . . You _Catholic_," she finished, lamely, with hardly any force behind the words. "Next time I won't go easy on you, right? You'd, um, you'd better watch out!"

She took a few halting steps backward, glanced up at the agents in the door again, and then vanished clumsily through the wall and out of sight. A few wispy bits of shadow marked the spot where she had left, and then those faded out as well.

The room was quiet for a long time. Heinkel met the confused stares of her fellows, and did her best to look as innocent as possible. It took an extra bit of effort to keep her eyes off the floor when a hand poked up through it to retrieve the bag it had left behind, but she was almost positive that nobody else noticed.

Heinkel did her best to pay attention to what the other agents were saying – nothing important, mostly hollow congratulations on pulling through – but the entire time, her mind was elsewhere, trying to decipher just what had happened earlier. Finally after a brief update on the state of things since the war (which mostly amounted to a very, very long list of the dead), the others left, and Heinkel was left alone in her quiet, unpleasantly bright hospital room with the air conditioning on too high and the machine that went _ping_.

She sat still for a while, and then, when she was quite sure that nobody else was coming, she carefully reached out and read one of the cards on the table next to her bed. And then another, and then another.

They were all from Seras. Heinkel tried her best to feel surprised, but didn't manage it quite as well as she would have liked.


	2. Visiting Hours

It took Heinkel an entire day to realize that Seras had left _The Fox and the Hound_ behind her, almost certainly on purpose. She ignored it, pointedly, for exactly a quarter of an hour before she hesitantly picked it up and flipped through it. There was a bit of paper wedged in between the pages, presumably to mark the place where Seras had left off, but Heinkel decided to start over from the beginning, just to be safe.

She only managed a few pages before she had to set it down again. It just wasn't her type of story.

Another quarter hour later, she picked it back up and read it anyway, because it was the only thing she had to do besides hurt and feel sorry for herself. Turning the pages with only one hand was more difficult than she had thought it would be, but she managed, clumsily.

She was still reading it the next day, when Seras came back.

There was a crackle of what felt like static electricity but probably wasn't, and then a bit of the wall across from Heinkel's bed turned dark and viscous. A blonde head poked through, wearing a cautious expression.

"Is it safe?" Seras asked. Heinkel yelped in surprise, startled away from reading. The book slid out of her grasp and fell to the floor, limply. She wobbled, dangerously, and had to wave her arm in a lopsided windmill to keep her balance.

She gave Seras an annoyed look. "Don't _do _that." It hurt far less to talk, now, and the pain seemed to be steadily ebbing.

"Sorry." Seras stepped the rest of the way into the room, looking sheepish. "I forget the effect that has on people sometimes. I just figured it out a little while ago, so I've been using it to get everywhere, you know? I mean, it's just _really_ convenient is all. I don't think I've used an actual door for over a week now."

"Yeah. Look, I – "

"Oh, and I'm learning how to walk around on the ceiling, too," Seras added cheerfully, brushing a few lingering wisps of shadow off of her sleeve. "It's a blast. You want to see?"

"No!" Heinkel shouted. Then, feeling oddly sorry about it, "Look, there're more important things to talk about than that. You wouldn't have come back otherwise."

Seras shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe I just wanted to visit."

Heinkel looked incredulous. "You're joking."

"Not really." Seras dragged a chair across the floor and sat down in it, looking at Heinkel seriously. "I never had much of a sense of humor. And I don't really think now is the best time to start."

"Then why did you come here?"

"Because I want to talk to you."

"_Why_?"

"Because you've got nobody else to talk to."

Heinkel scowled. Something in her still felt as though she shouldn't trust the vampire. But another, more logical part of her mind pointed out that she wasn't going to be winning any arguments while she was laid low in a hospital bed and missing half of her extremities. And so, begrudgingly, she turned to the vampire sitting next to her, and she talked.

. . . And _talked_. As far as Heinkel could tell, they hadn't been discussing anything more than what the city was like now that the war was over. Except, somewhere along the way Heinkel had mentioned the first time she had ever visited London, on a field trip with the rest of the orphanage. And she had started talking about how strange it was to think that all of the places she'd seen were gone and destroyed, now, all in a single night. And Seras had responded by telling stories about growing up in the city, and getting lost on the Underground, and standing out in the rain-soaked streets, making the decision to move to Cheddar because she needed something different, and because she had been certain that the London streets were never going to change.

Somewhere along the way, Heinkel finally thought to check a clock, and noticed to her surprise that two hours had gone by without her even noticing.

* * *

The next day, Seras came back again, and they discussed their memories of the war. The day after that, she brought a small bottle of wine with her, and they drank to the memories of those who had been lost to the fire and the madness. To all of London, to their brothers and sisters in arms, to those who had been dear to them, and to their two fathers – Anderson and Alucard, who had each died with a smile, doing what they loved the most. Heinkel and Seras both cried that day. It felt good to cry, as though a weight were being lifted, and Heinkel realized as she drained her cup that the stinging tears were just as much for Seras' losses as her own.

On the fourth day, they debated the aesthetic and practical merits of priestly robes versus miniskirts, and of knifes and handguns versus automatics and handheld anti-aircraft cannons.

On the fifth, they traded book recommendations. On the sixth, they argued about who would win in a fight between a vampire and a Dalek.

The day after that, Seras came armed with a photograph of herself as a young girl, and they told stories of what it had been like growing up. Seras talked about how she had hardly known her parents before they died, and Heinkel admitted that she had never even been given the chance to meet hers, and wasn't even entirely sure how they had died.

They compared notes on orphanages.

Heinkel boasted that she had learned how to fire a gun for the first time when she was six, and Seras smugly countered that she herself had been _four_ – though she did admit that her mother had been absolutely _furious_ when she found out that Seras' father had taken her to the police shooting range.

" . . . Except by then it was too late," Seras remembered. "By then I knew that no matter what, I was going to be a police officer, just like my father. When he died, I realized that it wasn't something I wanted to do anymore – it was something I _had_ to do."

Heinkel nodded. "At least you _felt_ like you had a choice. The minute Iscariot decided I'd make a good soldier, section thirteen was my destiny, whether I liked it or not."

Seras was quiet.

"That reminds me," she said, eventually, her face suddenly turning serious. "You're being let out tomorrow."

Heinkel started. After all this time – she had to keep reminding herself it had really only been a little over a week – she had almost forgotten that she still had a clandestine monster-hunting organization to return to. An organization, she recalled, which still wanted to turn her into their new secret weapon. The new Iscariot regenerator. Would it be worth it, if it meant she could have her missing arm and leg back? If it meant she'd never have to suffer permanent injury again?

Maybe.

Heinkel did her best to smile. It didn't even hurt at all to move her mouth like that anymore.

"So does that mean we're going to have to try and kill each other the next time we see each other?"

Seras didn't return the smile. "I don't know," she said, with absolute seriousness. "We might. But promise me one thing, at least."

Heinkel dropped her smile, and her lighthearted tone with it. She'd never seen Seras this grim in her conviction before.

"Of course. What is it?"

"Let me talk to you. Once. After you're . . . after it's done. There's something I want to ask you about."

Heinkel hesitated for a moment, but it didn't take long for her to realize that she couldn't refuse, not really. "As soon as they'll let me go off on my own," she said, "I'll be there."

Seras nodded. "Thank you," she said, softly, and without another word she turned and walked away, through the wall, leaving only the faintest wisp of a shadow trail behind her.


	3. The Fox and the Hound

A significant amount of time later, Heinkel stood alone, pausing along the path of a quiet stroll through the shadows.

It was done, and she'd managed to find herself alone for the first time since. That hadn't been easy, but she'd done it all the same. It was night out, colder than she had been expecting. She had come to Trafalgar Square, or at least what was left of it. They still hadn't quite managed to finish sweeping up the ashes or pick up all the rubble. Nor were they done clearing away the charred-black skeleton of the monster dirigible that had rained hell upon the city for one horrible, never-ending night.

Heinkel shifted her weight to her new leg, and flexed the fingers of her new hand, and tried as hard as she could to remember if that was what it was actually supposed to feel like. Absent-mindedly, she touched the bandages wrapped around her neck and encircling her cheeks; the frayed ends drifted lazily in the evening breeze. She wasn't sure why she'd kept them. She didn't need them, of course, and she wasn't very self-conscious of the massive scars on either side of her face from where the bullet had passed through her mouth. She simply felt incomplete without them, as though they were part of her identity now.

Something to remember it all by, perhaps.

Heinkel looked up. Something red flashed in front of the stars, and then there were two shadows, standing next to each other in the moonlight.

"How does it feel?" Seras asked.

"Cold."

The vampire nodded. "Yes," she said. "Yes, it does."

They stood in silence for a while, watching the quiet ruins. Remembering when they were lit by flames and the sky was shrouded in thick, blood-and-fat-clogged smoke.

"So," Heinkel said, finally. "How long until we have to start trying to kill each other?"

"We don't," Seras said, firmly. "Not ever. That's why I wanted to talk to you, after . . . after it was done."

Heinkel looked doubtful. "Oh? You want to talk peace between Hellsing and Iscariot? You think that we can be friends with each other and end _generations_ of warfare just like that? Just because we were friends for a week?"

Seras frowned. "No," she said. "Not peace between the organizations. That's never going to happen. I'm not stupid, Heinkel. I'm . . . " she hesitated, and seemed to falter for a moment. "I – I'm not stupid, alright?"

"I never said you were," Heinkel said. She felt concerned, suddenly.

"Well, no, of course you didn't. Nobody _says_ it, but almost everybody _thinks_ it. And that's what I know _without_ having to read people's minds, which, for your information, I'm getting the hang of doing a _lot _faster than anybody thinks I am." Seras scowled. "It's ridiculous. Everybody looks at me, they see a silly girl who doesn't know how to be a proper soldier, and in two seconds they decide I'm a moron. It's not _my_ fault, is it? It's not my fault I'm a copper, not a soldier. It's not my fault that it maybe takes a while to wrap my head around the idea of eating blood, _nothing_ but _blood, _for the rest of my damned unnatural _life_! It's not my _fault_, and it doesn't make me stupid."

Heinkel took a step towards the other woman. "Seras – "

"And it's not my fault that I got thrown into the middle of a war I never wanted, either. But you know what? I think I did all right for all of that. Even now, nobody except Sir Integra takes me seriously. They still think I'm just a silly girl who doesn't understand anything." Seras stomped angrily along the length of the toppled ruins of Lord Nelson's column. "But I _fought_. I didn't have to, but I did. And I did more by myself than any _one_ of the bloody stupid _proper_ soldiers out there!"

"_Seras _– "

The vampire began counting off of her fingers. "I shot down missiles, _by_ _myself_. I stood in the ranks of the enemy and I cut them down, like it was nothing, _by myself_. I fought a werewolf! A bloody _werewolf_! _With both of my arms off_!"

Seras huffed, and spun around on her heel. Her hands were balled up into angry fists. "When nobody else could even _touch_ him," she growled, "I shot that bloody psychotic Major in the _face_! With a _flak cannon_! And I killed _two bloody dirigibles_! _On my bloody lonesome self_! One when it was trying to _crash on top of me_! The second _from the inside_, with my _bare hands_!"

Seras leapt atop a pile of rubble and pointed to the massive, burnt-out dirigible carcass that still dominated the square. "I! Did! _That_!" she shouted, breathing heavily, teeth clenched in a furious grimace.

"Seras, _please_." Heinkel took the other woman by the shoulder. It felt like an unusual gesture to her, but somehow she knew it was what she was supposed to do. "Seras, you're not stupid. You're . . . " she faltered, hardly able to believe what she was about to say. "You're my _friend_, Seras."

Seras turned, and looked at her, and it only took a moment for her face to soften. "Thank you," she whispered, quietly. "It's been a long time since anybody told me that and meant it." She hopped back down to level ground, dragging Heinkel along with her.

" . . . Which actually brings me back to my original point," Seras said. "Think about it. Let's say we take it as a given that Hellsing and Iscariot are going to be threatening to destroy each other until Armageddon. What have they got toactually back those threats up with, besides a bunch of flimsy human soldiers who are really only there for show?"

"Um," Heinkel said, realization slowly creeping over her. "You and me."

"Exactly," Seras said. She grinned a huge, friendly, pointy grin. "If we put on enough of an act, then the higher-ups can yell at each other all they want and never get anywhere with it. Mutually assured destruction, except that in this case the nukes are friends with each other. Meanwhile, we'll be getting real work done – and working together, we'll probably get more done than _either_ of our organizations has _ever_ managed in the past."

Heinkel rubbed her jaw, thoughtfully. "And when, exactly, were you planning to enact this plan?"

"The next time Hellsing and Iscariot meet. It shouldn't be long, considering the state the nation is in right now." Seras took a step back, flexing her left arm and letting her wing grow out of the swirling shadow. "I'll give you until then to think it over, all right? Please, take me seriously on this. I want this to work – I want to be your friend, Heinkel."

Before Heinkel could say anything, Seras jumped into the air, and then she was off, streaking away across the night sky.

Heinkel stood in the ruins of London, alone again, and thought. She didn't have to think for very long.

* * *

It was a tent.

The space wasn't particularly small, as far as tents went, but what with the impromptu maps strung up from corner to corner, mounds of overflowing manila folders, and the sheer number of soldiers coldly glaring at each other from opposite sides of the extra-long card table, it actually felt absurdly cramped. There was a projector set up on one end of the table, clumsily, propped up by books and displaying a crooked image on a screen made out of half a dozen sheets of A4 paper scotch taped together. Plastic thermoses of tea stood haphazardly on every available flat surface not taken up by something else. Someone, somewhere, was taking minutes, by hand, with a ballpoint pen, on a faded legal pad.

. . . The resistance, four months later. They were actually doing quite well, all things considered.

The only problem was that most of them hadn't actually expected a serious threat so soon after watching all of London burn. It was just the sort of thing everyone tacitly expected to get a little breathing room from afterwards.

Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. Hence, the hastily called meetings. Hence, the improvised war room, which was actually a largish tent on the lawn of Hellsing manor, still under reconstruction. Hence, the very, very, _very_ shaky bit of cooperation between two of the most bitterly rivaled monster-hunting organizations in the nation.

Not that that really meant anything, considering how many _other_ monster-hunting organizations there were in Great Britain.

. . . Heinkel frowned.

She was making _jokes_ again, wasn't she?

She was standing, as comfortably as one could, and doing her best to look very threatening towards the group assembled on the other side. Her heart wasn't really in it, though, mainly because it had been two hours since the last time she'd been given the chance to sit down, and it showed. She was standing, protectively, at the shoulder of Iscariot's new leader, who if nothing else was very good at looking smug and confident.

Across from him, newly eyepatched and looking even more intimidating than usual, was Sir Integral. She was shouting something, but it probably wasn't particularly important. Seras was seated next to her, drumming her fingers quietly on the table and looking profoundly bored with the entire affair. She was back in uniform, now, though it was slightly different than what Heinkel remembered – Seras had, it seemed, finally managed to successfully petition for a pair of trousers and a proper flak jacket.

Heinkel sensed a note of relevancy entering the conversation. She turned an ear to Sir Integral's fuming half of the discussion.

"No, of _course_ we can't send in our reserve soldiers," the knight said, icily. "They've taken over the _entire _military camp. That means they've got all of the camp's weaponry at their disposal, not to mention who-knows-_how_-many troops of newly-turned ghouls to work with. We'd be torn to shreds, even if we sent all of our soldiers and all of yours combined."

Iscariot's leader considered her words seriously. "That may be the case," he said, after a moment, "but how certain are we that the vampires know how to _use_ the weapons they've acquired? You of all people should know that it's a little more complicated than just picking up a gun and pulling the trigger."

"As far as we can tell, the vampires we're dealing with are stragglers from the London attacks," Sir Integral snapped. "So I'm fairly certain they know what they're doing when it comes to guns, even if they are British-make."

"Well," Iscariot's leader said, sitting back in his chair. "That does present a conundrum, doesn't it? An entire military base taken over and controlled by vampires, which we can't break into because of our pitifully low troop headcount. It's embarrassing, really. You'd think there was _something_ that could be done. I expected better of the woman who claims to be the best vampire hunter in the country."

"You _insolent_ . . . !" Integral began, and then the shouting resumed, and Heinkel tuned out again. This was going nowhere in a hurry, and from the looks of things, they weren't going to be getting anywhere else anytime soon.

Her eyes wandered to the vampire sitting on the opposite side of the table, and Heinkel was startled to see that Seras was looking straight at her. There was an earnest look in the girl's eyes, and Heinkel was only a little bit surprised at how easily she managed to read it.

_Now or never,_ Seras' expression said. _And it has to be you_.

Well. This was it, it would seem.

Heinkel hesitated, and agonized over the decision she had to make. It was only for a moment, though; hard as it was for her to admit, she'd already made her choice ages ago.

As politely and discreetly as she could, Heinkel cleared her throat. Almost immediately, the shouting stopped, and every eye in the tent turned towards the cassock-clad woman.

Heinkel took a breath. "What if," she said, speaking slowly and choosing her words carefully, "you only sent one soldier?"

Sir Integral raised an eyebrow. "One soldier," she said, flatly, with far less incredulity than Heinkel had been expecting.

"Yes. One soldier. Wearing a _really big_ backpack."

It took a moment for everyone in the tent to realize what she meant. Once they had, the shouting resumed again, twice as loud as before. Within moments, Sir Integral was on her feet, pounding on the table in a frantic attempt to restore some semblance of order.

"_Quiet_!" She bellowed, and when the tent finally did feel silent: "It'll work."

"Ridiculous!" Iscariot's leader shouted. "It's – "

"It's been _done_. And it _works_. One vampire and one . . . _gifted_ human. Airdropped in over the enemy camp. Too small to be fought properly, too powerful to be repelled. _My_ organization – " Integral offered a withering glare to the Vatican side of the table " – has managed to successfully pull off an operation like that before. I don't see why it can't be done again."

"Why it can't be done again is because in this case the agents in question would spend more time trying to kill _each other_ than the enemy!"

"Well, _actually _– " All eyes turned. It was Seras, speaking for the first time. "If it's this important," she said, looking calculatedly bored, "I _think_ that I might be able to reign in my urge to kill the filthy priest, there, at least for an hour or two."

"Oh?" If Sir Integral was suspicious, she hid it well. She turned and looked directly at Heinkel. "And what about you?"

"What? Oh, um . . . " Heinkel tried to put on a menacing tone of voice. "That's right. I won't hurt your _monster_ while we fight off the scum inside that camp. But, um, after that, you can be sure I'll do whatever it takes to slaughter you all!"

Sir Integral snorted, nostrils smoldering with the smoke from her cigarillo. "Well then," she said. "It would seem that we've reached an agreement."

* * *

Two hours later, Heinkel Wolfe was in the back of the smallest, fastest cargo plane available, feeling slightly bored and sitting on top of a six foot long and vaguely coffin-shaped backpack.

"You know," she said, to nobody apparent, "I think they actually bought it back there."

"Well of course they bought it," the backpack said. "Now be quiet. I'm trying to take a nap."

"A _nap_? You don't plan on being asleep when we get there, do you?"

"Maybe. It'll be cool, trust me. I've got machine guns and everything in here, which, I will tell you, isn't comfortable in the least. Which is why I need quiet if I'm going to get any sleep at all. Just give me a knock on the lid when we get there and I'll be good to go, promise."

Heinkel shrugged. "Fine, whatever you say." She sighed, and went back to twiddling her thumbs. She couldn't help but wonder if this was actually going to work – would they be able to keep up such a ridiculous farce? And would it even be worth it?

She looked down. There were faint snores coming from the backpack beneath her.

. . . Yes, Heinkel decided. Yes, it would work, and yes, it was worth it.

For a friend, it was worth it.

* _THE END _*


End file.
